


paint it black

by irishais



Series: Paint It Black [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, Rule 63, i'm using the tags ao3 has so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 06:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11572737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais
Summary: It kills her, to see Seifer like this. Femslash, Paint It Black arc.





	paint it black

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by discussions on the faatali discord server. This is 100% welcomedmachine's fault.

It kills her, to see Seifer like this.

How long has she been gone, in the darkness of this room, the door left unlocked for anyone to waltz in and steal what paltry little she has? Even in the darkness, the fading light of day extinguishing like a cigarette on Seifer’s face, there’s a blankness in her eyes-- she’s lost, lost in time, lost again.

It kills her, that look on Seifer’s face; rather, the  _absence_  of one, of anything that isn’t disconnect. She is gone, gone, gone, and Squall doesn’t know how to bring her back. 

This was a mistake, coming here. 

Squall sets the drugstore bag down on the dented dresser, little glass bottles clacking against one another despite her best efforts to keep it quiet, intending to turn tail and run before she can wake up. 

 Seifer startles, and jerks upright from her sprawled dissociation, knocking the beer bottle in her hand sideways and dumping it across her lap.

“ _Shit_! Dammit, god--  _fuck_ \--”

Squall ducks because she knows what’s coming, and the bottle shatters three inches above her head, Seifer’s aim almost dead-on despite the fact that she’s probably been drinking for days. She would have made a great SeeD, all that raw power running in her veins.

So much for a quiet exit.

“What the  _fuck_ \--” Sei squints at her, fury and confusion warring for dominance on her face, then given up on entirely as she gets out of the moldy-looking armchair, shrugging out of the beer-soaked shorts.

Squall averts her eyes, studying the fire escape instructions mounted to the back of the motel room door with great interest. There are noises, fabric hitting a wall and collapsing to the dingy carpet that feels vaguely squishy even beneath Squall’s boots. The sound of water running, splashing, more swearing. The scent of hand soap, trying so hard to be floral and failing.

The sink quits.

“You’re following me.” It’s not even an accusation, it’s something Squall has not heard in her voice in a long time, not since her first exam failure. Something in her has broken entirely, and that, above anything else, makes Squall  _profoundly_  uncomfortable.

It’s so  _wrong_. Sei has never quit, never given up on anything, ever.

She takes a chance on looking back, eyes up. Seifer’s underwear is blue and practical, Garden-issue gym clothes, and she dresses in a stretched-thin black tank that falls down to her hips, cutoff shorts worn so ragged and threadbare they hardly deserve the name of  _clothing_.

She doesn’t miss the new scars, fresh snaking wounds across Seifer’s taut, muscular form, angry red and mostly-healed pink and sun-faded white. Squall’s gaze snaps away, but it’s not quick enough.

Seifer catches her looking.

She gathers the hem of her tank to the middle of her torso, and knots it with the practical speed of someone who habitually wreaks havoc on her clothing, the twist of fabric falling right next to a particularly nasty-looking wound.

“I’m not dead. I look like  _shit_ , but I’m not dead. You can put that in your official report.”

Squall opens her mouth to speak, closes it again, runs her fingers back through shaggy short hair. Seifer is good at that, robbing her of her words, sucking all the air from the room like a flame. Always has been.

“--I’m not here to make a report on you.” Half a step forward, and broken bottle glass crunches beneath the sole of her shoe. “I was--”

“Worried? Scared?” Cruelty on Sei’s tongue, even as she’s got a hairtie clamped between her teeth, gathering up endless blonde strands into a disaster of a bun. She is tall and beautiful and merciless, even in this hellish, dying-bulb lit motel room. But the defiance in her voice doesn’t stick, the meanness lackluster. “Afraid I’d off myself in the bathtub just for  _fun_?”

Seifer may have given up, but something in Squall gives, too.

“ _Yeah_ , actually. I was.”

She doesn’t need to be here, doesn’t need to put up with Seifer’s  _bullshit_ , almost turns on her heel and walks out, if it weren’t for the stunned incredulity that’s overridden everything on Seifer’s features. Green eyes are wide, brow half raised, hands stopped mid-final twist of the band around her hair.

It is a long five seconds of stillness.

“Well. I didn’t, okay?” Her hair is up and her voice is subdued, and Seifer drops on the edge of the bed, springs squealing in protest. Squall wonders how much gil she’s throwing away on this place, and how much longer she can afford to do it. Garden gave her nothing. Squall doesn’t really want to give her the check from Cid, folded in half and tucked in her wallet for safekeeping, if this is how she’s going to spend it.

Why did she even  _come_  here?

“What’s in the bag?”

She’s nearly forgotten about it, and Squall’s hand closes around it, the plastic crinkling in her grasp, a shockwave of noise in the stillness of the room.

“It’s-- stupid. It’s nothing.”

Seifer takes it from her before she can protest, pulling open the handles, laughing, laughing, when she sees the contents, and Squall can feel her face flush scarlet.

“I told you it was stupid.”

A dozen bottles of nail polish, every color of the rainbow-- she’d picked them at random from the rack with the highest price tag on it, jewel tones like bottled paramagic now scattered on the ugly quilt that covers the bed.

But she remembers Sei, in the year they’d shared a dorm, foot propped up on her desk, studious concentration in her face as she applied careful layer after layer to her toenails. Manicures were wasted on gunblade users, she’d always said, no point when they were just going to destroy their hands in training a few hours later.

Didn’t stop Seifer from doing her nails, anyway, blue and purple and pink and orange like the sunrise. Hands that shake now, even as she uncaps the brightest red, and smears a streak onto her thumb with her first passing attempt. 

“-- _Shit_.” And the laugh that follows is miserable, snaking into Squall’s heart and squeezing it until she thinks it might break out of her chest. It’s hard to breathe in here, but she forces herself to move anyway.

“Here,” Squall says, the words out of her mouth before she can stop them, feet crunching across broken glass and squishy carpet and reaching for the bottle in Seifer’s hands. “Let me--” The word help dies on her lips as her mouth pulls taut in concentration, Seifer’s hand warm in hers.

She smells like beer up close, needs a shower, needs something more than all of this. It kills her again, again, and Squall gets six fingers done, trading Sei’s left hand for her right, burying her emotions down seven layers deep, locking them up and pitching the key somewhere far, far away.

“You’re not half bad at this, Leonhart.”

“Hn.”

“Maybe we can order a pizza and do each other’s hair next.”

“Shut up, Almasy.”


End file.
